Best Doctors, Inc. is a Boston-based company that offers one way to rate physicians. The company asks about 35,000 physicians and surgeons nationwide to grade other doctors in their specialty. Those with the highest averages make the final list. In the state, about 5 percent, or 889 doctors made the list. Business North Carolina lists doctors in the state who made the list in twenty-one specialties, including cardiovascular, infectious disease, nephrology, and ophthalmology.

A small number of businesses in the country specialize in rescuing and preserving rare books and other documents. Don Etherington's Greensboro-based company, Etherington Conservation Services, is the largest one. Etherington began his training in his native London at age thirteen and earned an international reputation following a two-year project restoring rare, flood-damaged books in the national library in Florence, Italy. He has worked at the U.S. Library of Congress and the University of Texas. His company in Greensboro opened with a staff of three and now employs thirty. Their current high-profile project is restoring the North Carolina Museum of Art's four-volume edition of Audubon's The Birds of North America.

A panel of life-sciences experts--Don deBethizy, CEO of Targacept, Inc., a Winston-Salem company developing treatments for central nervous system disorders; Jan Turek, CEO of Biolex Therapeutics, Inc., a Pittsboro drug-maker; Jeff Clark, managing general partner of the Aurora Funds, a Durham venture-capital company; Robert McMahan, Gov. Michael EasleyÃ¯Â¿Â½s science adviser; and Sam Taylor, president of the North Carolina Biosciences Organization, a trade group based in the Research Triangle Park--discuss the state of biomanufacturing in North Carolina, whether the state can compete in this market, and the new North Carolina Research Campus being built in Kannapolis.

Public interest in weight loss is soaring. In Durham are three nationally known weight-loss clinics--Rice Diet Program LLC, Structure House Inc., and Duke University's Diet and Fitness Center. Each year around 3,000 dieters come to Durham from across the country and around the world. More participants could be accepted, but program directors say expansion would hurt their ability to serve their patients. Dieters contribute about $30 million to Durham's economy through fees that the programs charge, hotel rooms rented for weeks or months, and purchases from local retailers. Gray discusses the different diet programs.

Daryl Brewster was named president and CEO of Winston-Salem-based Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. in March 2006. The company has fallen on hard times because of such mistakes as accounting irregularities and overzealous domestic expansion. As a result, company stock has decreased in value. Brewster's goal is to restore the company's reputation. He has helped revive other beleaguered food brands, including Planters nuts.

Max Muhleman is a giant in sports marketing. He pioneered the permanent seat license. This gives sports fans the opportunity to buy seats in perpetuity in a particular sports complex. In January 2006, at age 69, he started a new sports-marketing company, Private Sports Consulting. The company's specialties are franchises, venues, brands, and motor sports. Muhleman plans to expand his Charlotte company to offices in New York and Los Angeles, where landing a National Football League team for that California city is a top priority.

Mike Williams, director of the Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center at North Carolina State University, discusses what is wrong with the way hog waste is currently handled and what alternatives are available. He found five that work well enough, but they're all too expensive.